J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Thames, London and South of England 1821 ... > River Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inscription by Turner: Number and Name of Sketchbook c.1823-4

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Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Label on Spine:
Inscription by Turner: Number and Name of Sketchbook c.1823–4
D40981
Ink on white wove paper, 30 x 65 mm, pasted onto leather spine of sketchbook
Inscribed by Turner in ink ‘88 River’ at centre
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
David Hill initially suggested that Turner probably added his sequence of numbered and annotated paper spine labels during a general review of his sketchbooks in about 1821 or 1822,1 later revising this to the second half of 1824 on the dating evidence of some of the relevant books.2 Ian Warrell has subsequently reasoned that the process began in 1823, ending in the summer of 1824.3 In this instance, Warrell’s dating coincides with the likely period of the sketchbook’s active use, as discussed in the Introduction.
Presumably with the passage of time, Turner’s number here has come to look like ‘87’ at first sight, and the second digit seems to have been corrected to an ‘8’ which has partially faded. Somewhat haphazardly, Turner apparently also numbered both the King’s Visit to Edinburgh and King at Edinburgh sketchbooks (Tate; Turner Bequest CC, CCI) as ‘87’.

Matthew Imms
November 2014

1
See David Hill, ‘The Landscape of Imagination and the Sense of Place: Turner’s Sketching Practice’ in Maurice Guillaud, Nicholas Alfrey, Andrew Wilton and others, Turner en France, exhibition catalogue, Centre Culturel du Marais, Paris 1981, pp.143, 147 note 34.
2
See David Hill, Turner on the Thames: River Journeys in the Year 1805, New Haven and London 1993, p.176 note 79.
3
See Ian Warrell, Turner’s Sketchbooks, London 2014, pp.15–16, 236 note 34, and p.234 for annotated checklist of ‘Turner’s Sketchbook Sequences’.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Inscription by Turner: Number and Name of Sketchbook c.1823–4 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, November 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-inscription-by-turner-number-and-name-of-sketchbook-r1172542, accessed 20 May 2024.